It seems odd to me that the issue of faith versus science still gets so many people excited. Maybe there’s a deficit in my understanding of human nature, or maybe my optimism does, despite all my efforts, transcend my legendary cynicism. It’s been over ten years since Stephen Jay Gould talked about non-overlapping magisteria (a super read, actually; you’ve got an agnostic Jew and and a bunch of monks going what?) and still we have muppets claiming that science disproves faith, or that the Bible is a scientific textbook, or whatever.
But it’s still a problem. A scientist’s faith becomes known and people ask ‘But hasn’t evolution disproved God?’ or ‘Hasn’t science disproved the Bible?’ (they’re the polite versions) or something equally fatuous. And on the other side we get retards like the Canadian science minister thinking that evolution is a religion, and wastes of money like the Creation Museum (and before you say anything, such madness is not limited to North America. There’s a farm in Somerset which is dedicated to proving that the account in Genesis is literal fact).
No ‘side’ can entirely take the blame. As I said in Part 1 I’m not at all hopeful I can change minds but I think it might be useful to think about the causes of the conflict.
Let’s pick on the scientists first.
Scientists don’t understand science
Science is the study of the natural world. By definition it makes no comment on the supernatural. It’s not, pace Gould, even a case of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’: science doesn’t say that the supernatural doesn’t exist; rather it doesn’t even know that such a thing is possible. So to say in any way that science disproves God is nonsensical. The only even vaguely sensible question science can ask is “If there is a God and they interact with the tangible world as you claim, how?”.
But the thing that really bugs me is the supreme arrogance of biologists (and I write as one). It’s the least quantitative of all the real sciences, the squishiest of subjects and yet it’s biologists, primarily, who claim disproof of God/faith/the supernatural. Because, hey, we can explain life. As if any God worthy of the name couldn’t figure it out.
Cosmology, surely, is far more of a threat to faith than evolution, but we hear precious little about it (links, as ever, are welcome in the comments). Atheists and theists alike fall into the same trap: wanting to see (or not) the finger of God, to prove or otherwise. But this is little more than the ‘god of the gaps’ fallacy—the idea that we invoke a supernatural being to explain things that we can’t. The Large Hadron Collider, for example, will not show us where God moved to change, or to create—and if it did I would be suddenly uninterested in such a small god.
The thing is, people often make the mistake of assuming that the faithful invent a religion because they need to explain something—usually the natural world. And while it’s true that religions have and do spring up for this reason, it is not why people are christians. Scientists think that by showing how things happen they disprove a need for (a) God, and in doing so not only misunderstand human nature (the need for meaning which science can never give) but also an alarming lack of theological training. But that, really, is excusable: the blame really lies with the faithful. Scientists are pretty straightforward after all, and have only the evidence before them to go on.
The religious don’t understand theology
Creationism does not pit science against religion […], for no such conflict exists. Creationism does not raise any unsettled intellectual issues about the nature of biology or the history of life. Creationism is a local and parochial movement, powerful only in the United States among Western nations, and prevalent only among the few sectors of American Protestantism that choose to read the Bible as an inerrant document, literally true in every jot and tittle.
— SJG
Creationists (and I include proponents of so-called ‘Intelligent Design’ in that) don’t understand science, obviously: but they also fail to understand faith. Creationism is used as a proof, as evidence for the existence of (a) God. (This is not the same as the ‘evidence’ I alluded to previously. There, and I got into trouble as I thought I might—but that’s probably my fault for not being totally clear—, I was saying that there is sufficient evidence to make faith a reasonable response, but I am certainly not claiming ‘proof’. That’s crazy talk.)
This is not a philosophical objection: I’m not saying that faith fails to be faith if there’s proof. I’m saying that if your ‘proof’ is shown to be false then you’re utterly screwed. So if you tie your faith to a ‘proof’ you actually end up trying to prove that your proof is true, rather than seeking out ‘truth’. Which is the cleft stick Creationists find themselves in.
Because, really, there is no reason to take the first few chapters of Genesis as anything other than a story about why rather than how. Was the author trying to make an astrophysical point? Or a biological one? Is there anywhere else in scripture where natural mechanisms are important to the theology, or indeed discussed? Is there anything about it that would make you think it is a scientific text? And if you are reading it to gain an understanding of the physical world (it does tell you a lot about human nature, though), then you are looking for a god of the gaps, one who will eventually be squeezed out, one who is too small.
It gets worse.
Cath made a point in the comments last time about trust, and the people you trust in. What happens when those you trust are shown not just to be wrong, but deceitful? Those people who told you that the creation story in Genesis is literally true, that there really was a global flood that killed every living being, that the Revelation is a literal account of the end of the world— and who make those things necessary items of faith —what do you do when you realize they were lying to you (intentionally or otherwise)?
Most people lose their faith.
Ah-ha, says the Creationist, then your faith wasn’t worth much anyway. And, doctrine is important! You have to believe the right things!
Now, doctrine is important, but it’s not (within limits) a deal-breaker. It’s something you learn as a believer: it’s not a prerequisite. And to be frank, Creationists seem to be more intent on forcing people to accept a theologically shaky set of beliefs than, say, loving them. Offering them forgiveness and a reason for living.
Let’s be clear here. These are people who tend to believe that you will suffer eternal torment if you’re not saved. Yet rather than offering acceptance and forgiveness of sins they’re insisting on a very narrow and theologically suspect interpretation of peripheral texts. This is a dangerous game, and if you’re going to play it you have to be damned sure of your ground, because the consequences are dire.
I’m certainly not attracted to the christian faith by people who insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis. Creationism is intellectually and spiritually bankrupt and I want no part of it. But, you know, there’s no harm in saying, ‘Yeah. I was wrong about that. Can you forgive me?’ Perhaps a little humility is required all round; and I’ll be first in the queue (because I could, after all, be wrong about everything).
So can faith and science co-exist?
Well, sure. But it will take people to think, which is hard, and realize exactly what each one says about itself. And what they don’t say about each other. Science explains the natural world. It tells us what we’re made of and how we, squishy biologicals that we are, fit together. Faith doesn’t. It can’t, just as science can’t tell us how to behave.
Further reading:
Quintessence of Dust
The Creation of an Evolutionist
An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution
Thanks for a thoughtful post. So, maybe you’ll get flack for only attacking Creationists and still not constructively explaining to the masses how faith and science can co-exist, but you don’t have to solve these big philosophical issues on your own on your blog.
It’s more like…peer review
And, actually, this entire post is itself a testimony of how faith and science can co-exist. The blogosphere seems to be full of
cat picturesextremes: it’s atheism vs. creationism, and there is barely a word from everyone in between. So, thanks for filling that void! Even though I don’t believe what you believe, I don’t think there’s anything inconsistent about having the combination of your profession and religion. There can be, I guess, if you take either to the extreme of trying to explain the other, but then we’re back at the start of this whole discussion…I might write an actual blog post in response if I ever get all my other unfinished projects out of the way.
Thanks for letting me off the hook, Eva. . . I think.
Explainifying? Someone else can do that. It’s not all about me.
Someone might have bought this up in Part I (maybe I’m the only one who thinks this is brilliant advice)- the Simpsons episode starring SJG himself which ends with a restraining order suggesting science and religion stay 500 yards apart at all times? They serve separate functions and needs in life (up to a point).
ha ha ha ha
Brilliant. All truth lies in Simpsons episodes. Seriously.
Oh, and this looks like required reading before you’re allowed on the internets (thanks for the link, Sarbjit).
Thanks Richard – and a lot better than the first installment 😉
The ‘science versus religion’ debate doesn’t stop to amaze me and makes me yawn at the same time. I have a feeling that we’re not seeing the masses in between the extremes because to everyone who doesn’t have an extreme position – for whom peaceful coexistence is a perfectly viable option – it’s just so obvious that there doesn’t have to be a problem. And that it’s a waste of energy to fight each other.
It’s not a waste of energy to make a stand against silly creationism though – that’s a different thing, as I think you hint at.
It’s good to know that you’re finally settled down and can dedicate some time to philosphical musings again, Richard. I agree with Steffi that the sequel was in this case better than the original.
HOWEVER, allow me to say a few words in defence of scientist (my allegiances are kind of obvious, yes). I really don’t believe that biologist or scientist in general (at least the clever ones) claim that they can disproof God, faith or the supernatural the supernatural. What they say instead is that, if you adopt a rational way of looking at the world, it makes no sense to postulate their existence in the first place. Even the division between the natural and supernatural world that you postulate seems unnecessary when you think of it: Science is just a way of understanding the world using reason as a tool, and this world comprises everything that we can perceive through our senses (or deduce by rational inference). Everything else (if there is indeed something else) is just beyond our reach, and so it makes no sense to postulate anything at all given that a priori we would never find a way to prove or disprove our assertions. In the end, it’s just a matter of applying Occam’s razor, which is as valid as it ever was, and try to eliminate superfluous hypotheses that make the overall model more complicated. I think that this can hardly characterized as supreme arrogance; instead, it’s just being consistent in your thinking, which applies as much when you’re pondering the Big Questions as when you’re designing and/or interpreting humble experiments at the bench.
And finally, it is not the case that by being a hardcore rationalist you disprove the need for God. I heartily agree with you in that there are powerful psychlogical reasons that lead people to have faith, and I don’t think that by saying so I’m throwing away rationality or anything like that. But the fact that people have faith in God, and that they may derive real advantages from it, doesn’t allow me to conclude that this God they believe in is real, or at least a possibility. From a scientific (i.e. rational) point of view, this would be the same a saying that because a placebo demostrated to have real and measurable therapeutic effects in cancer patients, then there MUST have been some active anticarcinogen component in the pill, after all.
bq. What they say instead is that, if you adopt a rational way of looking at the world, it makes no sense to postulate their existence in the first place.
But you see, that’s the arse-backwards way of looking at it. You can’t postulate the existence of God a priori — that’s been my contention all along, even though I’ve not said it in so few words. That existence, that faith, comes from revelation. Starting from nothing, and working out the existence of God, is religion: I’m talking about something else entirely.
In other words, I agree entirely with what you’ve written. But I’m not starting from that point, so it’s a tad irrelevant.
YM, as ever, MV.
I’m trying, but failing, to see why what Cristian said is irrelevant. For me it’s the core of the argument.
As much as this makes me nervous (just kidding), I think I understand what Richard is trying to say… to me, it (again) very simply boils down to ‘you believe or you don’t’. Whether you’re a scientist or not really doesn’t come into it. Can it just be as simple as that? Please?
Cath—you can’t get to a position of faith from observation of the natural world and still satisfy Occam. Which was, actually, Occam’s point: that you don’t have to invoke the supernatural. But that’s quite different from saying the supernatural exists.
Yes Steffi, it can be that simple.
Note to self: don’t write comments after midnight.
OK, so maybe not irrelevant, but not actually the thread I was teasing out. Another nail in the Creationists’ coffin, sure: but they would probably dispute the ‘God as unnecessary’ thing and you’d get no traction at all.
Yes, it’s better than part 1, but I am still not sure what you are getting at. First, Creationism is a red herring. It is quite clearly a political movement rather than a religious one. Second, literalism is easily exploded. To be a literalist you’d have to read the bible in ancient Hebrew , which is hard enough. And that’s before you understand what it means, which is harder, given that the context is now lost. But I do agree that faith is revelatory and is as much to do with science as fish ride stationary feminists. Really, I can’t see what the fuss is all about.
bq. Really, I can’t see what the fuss is all about.
That’s kinda my thesis. But other people do make a fuss. So I was looking for someone to blame, because that’s what blogs are for.
A lot of scientists ‘make a fuss’ about religion because they don’t understand science and its limitations. HWMNBN is just the best-known example. Because they expect science to be capable of explaining everything, they look at faith, and, finding it intractable, get cross with it.
I don’t see why religion is intractable, really. It is just people adopting a non-rational belief (for psychological reasons, pressures from their sociological environment, whatever). About making a fuss about it, it depends on what you define as “a fuss”. Of course I’m perfectly OK with people being allowed to believe whatever they want, no matter if I consider it rational or not. But I’ve always been curious on how people manage to adopt a scientific point of view on their daily lives (this not being necessarily the same as working as a scientist: That’s just a skill, and you can do it quite well regardless of your philosophical background) and, at the same time, profess a religion. Once again, I don’t think that this is wrong at all, but such a belief is non-rational (I think we all agree on that, you don’t get to faith through reason). How do you decide then when to “switch modes”? Why is a strong belief in God perfectly acceptable, but a belief in invisible pink unicorns just silly? How about becoming convinced that I’m going to win the lottery next month? That would certainly make me feel great, and take a lot of problems out of my back, so wold it be OK to just go ahead and believe that also?
To be a literalist you’d have to read the bible in ancient Hebrew
Only one half. The other half is in Ancient Greek. In my four years of studying AG at university, we had a lot of fun with the New Testament. There are so many things that the King James version just got completely wrong. Lots of confusion with the masculine versus the neuter, a mistake which can result in rendering ‘evil’ as ‘the devil’ (o kakos) and vice versa, and lots of ‘humankind’ (anthropos) being mistranslated as ‘man’ (andros) — which could , and has, led to interpretation that woman aren’t allowed in certain spheres where they were never meant to be excluded. Fascinating stuff, and after taking courses like this you can never take Fundamentalists seriously again.
Quite right, Jenny, but as a card-carrying Red Sea Pedestrian I can regard the NT with the same degree of seriousness as the funnies at the back if a serious newspaper, with the Book of Revelation as the horoscope section. At a conference in Phoenix I came across the Book of Mormon in my hotel room. Sure beats magic mushrooms, that one.
Cristian, following Richard’s argument (Richard?) I guess it would be perfectly fine to believe in invisible pink unicorns, winning the lottery, or whatever if you had a revelation about it. I don’t understand where the switch is either, although I suspect there may not be a switch as such. Hey, I think I’m on to something: we mentioned the role of someone’s environment in drawing them into a religion before, but how much does the reinforcement by those with the same beliefs influence people sticking with their revelation? Someone with a revelation about pink unicorns would stand a tough ground…
Ah, the old “my religion is right but yours is silly” thing raises its head. This should be entertaining.
Let’s see if I’ve had enough coffee for this…
Metaphysics is, by definition, not physics. Empirical observations that work so well in science don’t apply there (although logic works well in both).
Metaphysical questions are, for example, “do we have free will?” or “what is consciousness?” or “are there supernatural beings beyond what we can observe?”. Physical (empirical) questions can be “are there unicorns in our world?” or “will I win the lottery” or “are the statements about the history of humans and the earth that are made in the bible true?” because you can attempt to find out the answers to these questions by using science: you can go on an expedition to look for unicorns (good luck getting that funded under current economic conditions), you can wait until the lottery results are announced or use statistics to calculate your odds of winning, and you can observe the natural world to find compelling evidence that it is in fact much older than the Bible suggests.
Not all these questions are equally easily answered. And at some point you’re going to have to admit that unicorns might not be found on this planet after all. But in terms of the methods you use to find unicorns, a scientific expedition seems the way to go. After all, in all the fairy tales about them, unicorns live on earth, so systematically looking for them may be effective. You can’t go on an expedition to look for deities, because whatever (scientifically unreliable) information we have about them suggests that you won’t just run into one if you look long enough. They either don’t live on earth or in our dimensions at all, or they can control their visibility. This would even apply to unicorn-gods. Scientifically, it’s impossible to make any statements about their existence – it’s metaphysics. Occam’s Razor works in as far as you can say “Oh, we can explain all these earthly phenomena without adding a god to the mix, so let’s assume that there was no divine intervention in the creation of our universe”. We all agree that religion has no business making statements about science. But it works the other way around as well: science has no business making statements about religion. It’s at the level where science doesn’t apply, just like it’s impossible to find empirical evidence for or against free will. It has to be a belief at that point. I believe I have free will (but doubt it once in a while) and I don’t believe in any gods. I can’t give you any scientific explanation for those beliefs (and some may say that they are inconsistent), but I do know that they are beliefs.
There is a general idea (among many people) that atheism and science go hand in hand, because you have to be rational to be a scientist and you supposedly have to be rational to be an atheist, but I don’t think there’s anything rational in my belief that there are no deities. I don’t have anything to support it, scientifically. Once I start being rational about it, I’m going to have to conclude that agnosticism is the only way to go, but that’s not what I believe – I believe very strongly that there is no external being either observing me or meddling with my life, no matter how reasonable and rational the statement “we can’t know either way” is.
What bugs me enormously is the assumption that science/reason and atheism (not agnosticism) go hand in hand. It creates a divide that leads to agitated politicians thinking that evolution has anything to do with the god they believe in, and it presupposes that all scientists are atheists, which can then lead to scary assumptions that religious scientists are not good enough. If the only kind of god that people believed in was a god of the gaps, that would be a fair assumption, because it would mean that those scientists were at risk of losing their religion the more they find out, but many (most, hopefully) people who believe in a deity believe in a metaphysical one, who does not interfere with what we empirically observe, but beyond that. When you don’t believe there is anything beyond that realm, that is atheism or humanism, but a belief nonetheless.
I think Cristian has made many of the points I’m thinking of.
From the original post:
There’s an obvious bit missing, here: what does faith explain, and what does it say about itself? I agree, science is how we learn about the natural world — but it’s more than that; it’s a way of looking at data to see if it’s consistent, predictable, and valuable. It also provides ways of putting some kind of “probability” range onto mushy figures and sources of data. We take the available input from observable reality and see how it fits together. But.. what other input do we have, outside of observable reality?
A few people have mentioned “revelation”… what IS that, exactly? Certainly if I wake up in the middle of the night with a “bolt-of-lightening” realization of some kind, that’s part of observable reality, it’s just self-reported instead of measured by an outside observer (or both, if I’m in a sleep lab). Self-reported data is mushier than something you can measure easily, but it’s still very useful in studies, especially things like “pain level”. It seems likely that the revelation was pieced together by my mind based on data is already had… but it sounds like you’d say that’s a new source of data.
But then we should be able to apply scientific principles to that new data, right? Do we have any reason to believe that revelation is separate from all other kinds of “eureka” moments that characterize human consciousness? Has there been any attempt to collect a body of revelations, to analyze & correlate them, etc.? (Has anyone ever had a Christian revelation with no prior exposure to Christianity, for example? That kind of thing would be interesting…).
I can definitely say why I personally find the conversation important — faith takes many forms, but in its most common form in the US, at least, people actively consider God to be as “real” as themselves, and are easily manipulated by leaders who claim to be guided by God and/or religious principles. There was that Gallup poll a few years back showing that an admitted atheist has a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected POTUS, even though his/her decisions are all about the natural world, not anything supernatural.
Ah, the old “my religion is right but yours is silly” thing raises its head.
Cath, not from me: I’m just saying that someone who follows a religion that already has billions of followers will have a much easier life.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Eva. You raise some really interesting points there (as usual).
Here’s my two cents: I think that Rob is spot on on what he says in his last paragraph. If you want to confine yourself to believe in a purely metaphysical deity, this partially solves the problem, but I see such a deity as no much more than the ultimate God of the Gaps. It would have to be an entity that has no influence whatsoever in the physical world, and whose characteristics are impossible to be revealed using empirical methods. Fine, such a being would certainly be outside the realm of science (we could never hope to fill THAT gap), but it would be impossible for us to know anything about it: is there one or many? Is it conscious? Is it intelligent? Does it have a moral code?
Compare this with the beliefs that Christians have: they believe in a God that in turn became a human being, heavily affected the course of history (it would be hard to think of any other historical figure as influential as Jesus Christ), died and came back from the dead three days afterwards. Moreover, the Christian God has a very specific moral code, which was revealed to mankind and every Christian is expected to follow. This also has consequences for what happens to everyone after death, that is, there is an afterlife and it has very specific characteristics. In summary, this is not a metaphysical God at all, it’s much more than that. How do people know that things are like that, and not different, if you can’t use any rational means to do so? Why a loving God instead of a vengeful God? Or just one that doesn’t care? By putting God beyond the reach of reason, every religion is potentially true, because there’s simply no way to make any comparison. And if every religion is true, almost by definition, isn’t that the same as saying that religion is ultimately meaningless?
BTW, I agree that a scientific expedition would be the best method to determine the existence of regular unicorns, but I was actually referring to invisible pink unicorns
You got to love this about them: Like all religions, the faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them
Abraham invented a non-visible God for the perfectly good reason that nobody could nick it. I have been opining on related questions here and especially here.
Steffi, that comment wasn’t directed at you – your hypothetical example actually was a very nice demonstration of what I meant though.
I would have clarified earlier, but got back from the cinema last night to see the length of these comments and thought “umm, Monday”. Great stuff everyone, but waaaay outside the area I’m comfortable writing about!
No worries, Cath – I just wanted to clarify.
I agree that a scientific expedition would be the best method to determine the existence of regular unicorns, but I was actually referring to invisible pink unicorns
Cristian, I love that statement. Did we ever decide to do a ‘quote of the month’ for the NN home page? 🙂
The problem I have with invisible pink unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, and teapots in the sky is that they are all invented as argumentation tools. Nobody actually believes in them, and that’s different from the religions you’re arguing against.
What I do find interesting is “extinct” gods, like the Greek and Roman and Norse ones. But I have to leave, like, RIGHT now. Discuss!
Oooh, good one. The discovery that not only do millions of other people currently believe in religions other than the one I was brought up in, but that people in other times believed in all kinds of other Gods and systems, all with equal conviction to that with which the Christians I knew believed in Jesus, was the very first step I took towards agnostic atheism.
Very good one, Eva – I wonder whether we’d believe in this if it was still actively practised today? (I don’t think so…)
Anyway, those ancient religions were obviously all wrong, since they got driven out by Christianity…
(Richard, you better come back to this discussion quickly, before it gets out of hand…)
Agree that invisible pink unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, and teapots in the sky are just invented argumentation tools, Eva, but I think that’s precisely the point of them: they are an example of how there is absolutely no rational way to distinguish between a religious belief held by millions of people for centuries and a completely made-up and goofy belief that no one really takes seriously. The implication is that there is no reason to give the former more thought than the latter.
This reminds me also of a piece I read not that long ago on scientology and that is very relevant to this discussion. I remember that the author argued that, despite first impressions, their beliefs are no more outlandish or improbable than those of a Christian or a Muslim. It’s just that, instead of having been around for centuries, they are relatively recent (the founder of their religion died just decades ago!) and therefore they haven’t had time to be assimilated into our culture yet, in the way that, let’s say, the New Testament has. In other words, it’s not like what is stated in there makes more sense, it’s just that we as a culture have become used to those specific pieces of nonsense.
I’ve decided that I’m going to take up a religion where I worship a mix of half-gods from various cultures. It’ll be awesome. Half-gods always make for the best stories.
I’d rather start my own cult, there’s lots of money to be made.
Eva and Cath, you two should maybe work together on that? I suggest something Amazon-ish – I have a feeling that might sell.
After a former colleague got sucked into a cult-esque “self-help” group called Landmark, the rest of our group of friends decided that we should come up with our own group. We decided that our best bet would be to claim to apply the scientific method to whatever problems the
suckerspunterspoor troubled dears had in their lives. In exchange for buckets of money, obviously.As alternative careers for a bunch of grad students and postdocs go, it’s probably one of the more lucrative ones out there.
Not long after I vowed on here to worship a bunch of half-gods, I got news that Richard landed safely in the UK. IT’S A MIRACLE!!!
w00t!
I didn’t want to make your flight superstition any worse, Eva, so I was saving this link for just such a moment.
Well, there you go.
Steffi, I think religion and sex is the way to go, if you want money.
🙂
Welcome back to Europe!
Heh, thanks Steffi 🙂
It’s good to be in a sensible timezone again.
That existence, that faith, comes from revelation.
And what, exactly, do you mean by “revelation”?
That which is revealed.
The problem with trying to limit science by saying that it is the study of the natural world is that there is no good definition that divides things into the natural and supernatural. If, tomorrow, some of those buried this past year in Yuma, Arizona, were to rise from their graves and start traipsing through town eating brains and raising a ruckus, scientists would go there and start to study what was happening: which dead tended to come back and which didn’t, how they persist on brains, and what it might be about Yuma that the dead first walked from there. The reason that there currently is no scientific study of zombies isn’t because scientists turn a blind eye to anything that gets labeled “supernatural,” but because there currently is no evidence of zombies.
Of course, one can declare that everything that has evidence from which scientists can start their study is, ipso facto, natural. What that does, though, is equate the supernatural with that for which there isn’t evidence. Which pretty much concedes the point that many atheists press about it and belief in it.
Interesting article and comments. The one thing I would like to add is that I really think the “Scientists don’t understand science” argument sets up a strawman (strawmen?).
“[…]it’s biologists, primarily, who claim disproof of God/faith/the supernatural.”
Really? I don’t recall every hearing a legitimate biologist (or any other scientist) claim to be able to disprove the existence of god. PZ Meyers or Richard Dawkins surely wouldn’t.
That which is revealed.
Mystical vibrations? Direct personal experience of the divine that can’t be shared? Some other such claptrap? Right. Thanks for playing.
Or, you could do your own homework. Google revelatory faith, for a start.
Great article, Richard! Your position seems consonant with David Eagleman’s views on this, which I’ve enjoyed hearing about on 3 different occasions in the past month on NPR. Eagleman is a neuroscientist (at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas I believe), and he’s written a book of literary fiction called SUM, which I was interested to discover was glowingly endorsed by lots of scientists (Brian Greene, Alan Lightman, etc) and atheist writers (Philip Pullman) as well as by the faithful (I stumbled on several blogs about this). On the radio Eagleman has been advocating a new position called “Possibilianism,” which is his term for a middle ground between dismissive atheism and blind acceptance of faith. I don’t know if I can do his arguments justice, but essentially he points out that scientists should be the ones most full of awe at what we discover, and while “it does not make sense to subscribe to a particular, idiosyncratic religious story”, it also “does not make sense to throw out all the interesting things with the bathwater”, as he suggests the New Atheists run the risk of doing. I assume you’re already familiar with his book, but I thought I’d mention it in case you’re not — sounds like you’d enjoy it.
p.s. Here’s a link about SUM that I just found on NPR’s Books We Like, with 4 excerpted stories from the book.
Sam, I suspect the average non-believing anthropologist, or scientist generally, is more open than the average religious believer to the import of the full range of myth, from the ancient Greek gods to the modern Unitarian’s various notions, from the deities of an Amazonian tribe’s, to those of a modern Catholic in Monterrey. And even recently invented gods, such as those of Scientology. It is the believer who wants to elevate one god or one set of gods, while dismissing all others as qualitatively different.
In fact, I would venture that a good definition of atheism is precisely that it is the stance that grants about equal possibility to all gods.
Er…I believe that that would be agnosticism . Atheism involves denying the existence of God altogether, a position as difficult to defend (from an empirical point of view) as that of those who support any other systems of religious beliefs.
Cristian, the two words agnosticism and atheism are too few to describe the range of stances. “Agnosticism” is also used to refer to those who think that the existence or non-existence of the gods is inherently unprovable, a stance, strangely, held by many believers. Today, I often see the term “weak atheism” used to mean lack of belief, and “strong atheism” used to mean the positive belief that a god doesn’t exist. Obviously, one can be a strong atheist with regard to some gods, but not others. Indeed, most believers are strong atheists with regard to all gods except the few they approve.
In any case, my impression is that most people calling themselves atheists today are “weak atheists” with respect to most gods. You’re correct that that more fits the term agnosticism as Huxley coined it.
Perhaps it is worth noting that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is no less plausible than other gods for a) being recently invented by skeptics, or b) resembling a popular food in appearance. For all we know, whatever gods there are will choose the first as their preferred means of revelation. The problem with revealed faith is precisely that it provides absolutely no way of knowing what counts as revelation. It might be that that quiet still voice inside the believer is just misguidance due to accident of human physiology, while the counter arguments of non-believers is precisely how the gods that truly exist have chosen to communicate with man.
As for resemblance to spaghetti, that is no more fanciful or less likely than a god who turns wine into his own holy blood. These observations will cause the typical American Christian to splutter in indignation. But note that it is those Christian who want to dismiss some gods, while elevating others. It is the atheist who is asking, why is this one, albeit conceived as a rhetorical device, any less likely than any other?
The terms agnosticism and atheism can be problematic, because they have different meanings to the end-users. Eagleman has been arguing that the way most people use the word agnosticism (and what Russell is calling weak atheism) is an intellectually weak position, because it is typically used to mean “I don’t know if the man with the beard on the cloud exists or does not exist”. A different strategy, he suggests, is to make up new stories by springboarding off the bedrock of our current knowledge, and he cites the philosophers Whitehead and Bertrand Russell for inspiration here. In other words, he wouldn’t be impressed with the range of myths about Greek gods, Amazonian tribes, etc, because those stories are only infinitesimally small points in the space of possibilities for what’s going on out there. So the idea is that science leads us each generation into entirely new territories, and spirituality can be built in these new domains instead of worrying about which one of the old myths (almost all of which were written before we knew much of anything about anything) might be correct. His book “Sum” is an insidiously clever way of illustrating this point (i.e., the point about “entertaining the vastness of possibility space” and being comfortable with not-knowing), and by casting it as literary fiction I think it’s been able to resonate with a much wider audience than it would have if told as a straight polemic.
Why is saying that you don’t know if the man with the beard on the cloud exists or does not exist an intellectually weak position? It’s just conceding that it may be true, but since there is no way to prove it then there is no point in arguing about it. Is Cartesian skepticism also an intellectually weak position? Because that basically involves doubting the existence of the external world, and philosophers have been trying to find a fault with it ever since it was first formulated (largely unsuccesfully, by the way).
And I sort of disagree with the definition of agnostic given above. If a gnostic is someone who believes in a truth that has been revealed, an agnostic surely would be the opposite, that is, someone who just doesn’t suscribe to revealed truths (or religious truths, in this case).
Is agnosticism a stance about what is known or a stance about what can be known? I’ve met many believers who begin with the assertion that it is impossible to know whether or not the gods exist, and describe their belief as a choice made possible by that.
It seems quite strange to me to believe something of a factual nature as a matter of choice. That act of faith seems a very strange thing to do to oneself. But more, I think they are factually mistaken in their beginning premise of agnosticism. I have no doubt that the god in which they believe could make himself known, to everyone, if he so chose. The mythology of that god is, in fact, full of stories that tell of him doing so. He performed miracles, from turning water into wine to curing the blind and resurrecting the dead. He sent angels to wrestle Joseph and to tell Mary of her virgin pregnancy. It’s easy to imagine ways a god or prophet could demonstrate their foresight and power — and certainly, presence — in the modern world. In short, agnosticism is wrong. The gods are not unprovable, but unproven. Which is a very different thing. If there isn’t evidence for the gods, it’s because they choose not to provide it, not because there is some impossibility that prevents it.
Now, it might be that whatever gods there are choose to keep themselves hidden for reasons we do not know. A disproof of agnosticism is not a disproof of gods. It is important, though, that we do not have any of the kinds of evidence for a god that would not only be possible but expected for a wide variety of gods. Many people today believe in a very strange kind of god, one who is willing to show himself in ways and in the cultural settings that do not well examine or test such things, and who keeps himself meticulously hidden in the cultural settings where that would constitute evidence of his own existence.
Agnosticism is not wrong if you’re talking about the metaphysical deity that people were talking about in earlier comments of this thread. Of course, if the God you’re talking about is one that routinely interacts with the physical world, then its existence/lack of existence can be determined in the same way we use to analyze or understand any of the other aspects of this physical world. But when people argue for the coexistence of the religious and scientific views these days, they usually claim that religion (and the gods) belong to the realm of the supernatural or metaphysical, and therefore it makes no sense to try to validate/disprove their existence using reason as a tool.
Agnosticism merely means accepting that there are limits to reason, beyond which nothing can be said to support OR disprove any religious claim, and therefore the only thing that makes sense is not to say anything at all.
I am quite suspicious that “metaphysical” is not a well-defined category. I understand, of course, that there might be gods who choose not to interact with us.
Most believers I encounter believe in gods who can and do interact with us. Their religions have prophets. Their gods performed miracles. At least, once upon a time. Some even claim ongoing revelation, which were it true, could easily be tested. Assuming their god were so willing. Personally, I’d be pretty impressed by a prophet who foretold the final digit of the closing DOW for the next dozen trading days.
The Deists hypothesized a god whose sole interaction with the rest of the world was its initial creation. It’s not clear why the Deist’s god would limit himself to that, but that’s no real criticism, since the motivations of the gods are mysterious. I agree with that the Deist’s god is theoretically more immune to investigation than most gods. Despite that, it doesn’t seem to have much attraction. There aren’t many Deists these days.
I agree with you on that a 100%. See my comment above, when I was replying to Eva.